March 2018 - vcf-midatlantic

Re: [vcf-midatlantic] Fwd: Re: Museum report
by Evan Koblentz 19 Mar '18

19 Mar '18

Thank you Doug/David. I only used a small amount of Goof Off but it didn't work anyhow. Maybe because the instructions say to let it dissolve the residue for a couple of minutes, however, this is a vertical panel so when I put it onto the residue most of it just dripped down. What's a better method, other than removing the panels (not so easy to do; it requires removing whole components not just typical latch-on panels.)

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Re: [vcf-midatlantic] Trenton Message-ID:
by Jeff G 19 Mar '18

19 Mar '18

Now I wonder if I'm the actual Jeff G, the "other" Jeff G, or perhaps a third Jeff G that wasn't even mentioned, but I won't lose sleep over it since it was really just in passing. ;-) Trying to keep my nephews focus was tough but he seemed to have fun looking around.

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Trenton
by Evan Koblentz 18 Mar '18

18 Mar '18

Another year of the Trenton Computer Festival is in the books. Basically the same as it's been for several years now -- small one-day event, about a dozen of our group members in attendance (hope I don't forget anyone: Herb, Jeff G., other Jeff G., Jeff J., Dean, Drew, Rolf, Mouse, Ian, Don, Frank) ... also lots of people who know us + come to VCF East but aren't active participants. There were some interesting talks, a small tiny vendor area, and post-show dinner with group members. It remains fun and useful for us to have a table there and it's a relatively low-effort endeavor for us. I brought Corey's Mimeo instead of ours because his is installed in a briefcase which makes it easy to move around. So many people thought it was real, and in some cases I let them. :)

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Looking for weight of vintage computers for Science Fair Project
by Connor S 18 Mar '18

18 Mar '18

Thank you to all who have helped with Connor's science fair project comparing 13 micro-computers! We've been learning so much and greatly appreciate the help testing and interpreting data so far. Connor S. has put together some graphs on time to boot, factorial calculations & time to count to 1,000,000. He also made a comparison table based on information we could find on each computer. We've had difficulty locating the weight of some computers on-line. If anyone can help, we are still looking for the approx. weight of the following computers. (Weight should include computer, disk drives & monitor, if possible) - Commodore PET - TRS-80 model 1 - Atari 800 XL - TRS CoCo 3 - Vic-20 -Tandy model 102 Thank you, Jen & Connor S.

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Re: [vcf-midatlantic] Museum report Saturday
by Evan Koblentz 17 Mar '18

17 Mar '18

Thank you Tony! The tablet network is about to become much more reliable. In the next week or two we're changing over from the Pi and cheap home router to the new server and a Cisco access point. That should dramatically improve the network. I'm excited about it. On Mar 17, 2018 9:04 PM, "Tony Bogan via vcf-midatlantic" < vcf-midatlantic(a)lists.vintagecomputerfederation.org> wrote: Ended up spending most of the day at the museum today. Had a fair amount of visitors. A group of about 12-14 Boy Scouts (8-10 Boy Scouts plus 4 or 5 adults) The group leader mentioned he started in college using a slide rule....when I pulled out the slide rule from the workshop he proceeded to give a demonstration to all of us on its use. Was definitely the highlight of his day and mine!! I had several families come through along with a few other people that were volunteering doing cleanup that took breaks from their work to visit the museums. I got several more apple Computers assessed and tagged for the warehouse. The hallway and museum ceiling hung TVs were not showing their slideshows so I reset them. Bill Inderrieden stopped by and did some work and we coordinated a little more on the April switching of the Univac pallets (new ones that Bill Dromgoole made will replace the older and less attractive ones the computer components are currently sitting on) The wifi network for the tablets went down just as I was closing up around 4:30. I'll stop by in the morning after work to drop machines off at the warehouse and will fix it then. All in all a busy day with some really interested people. Many of which had experience working with various machines in college or at work that we have in the museum (and a slide rule!!) Tony Sent from my iPhone

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Museum report Saturday
by Tony Bogan 17 Mar '18

17 Mar '18

Ended up spending most of the day at the museum today. Had a fair amount of visitors. A group of about 12-14 Boy Scouts (8-10 Boy Scouts plus 4 or 5 adults) The group leader mentioned he started in college using a slide rule....when I pulled out the slide rule from the workshop he proceeded to give a demonstration to all of us on its use. Was definitely the highlight of his day and mine!! I had several families come through along with a few other people that were volunteering doing cleanup that took breaks from their work to visit the museums. I got several more apple Computers assessed and tagged for the warehouse. The hallway and museum ceiling hung TVs were not showing their slideshows so I reset them. Bill Inderrieden stopped by and did some work and we coordinated a little more on the April switching of the Univac pallets (new ones that Bill Dromgoole made will replace the older and less attractive ones the computer components are currently sitting on) The wifi network for the tablets went down just as I was closing up around 4:30. I'll stop by in the morning after work to drop machines off at the warehouse and will fix it then. All in all a busy day with some really interested people. Many of which had experience working with various machines in college or at work that we have in the museum (and a slide rule!!) Tony Sent from my iPhone

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Museum today
by Tony Bogan 17 Mar '18

17 Mar '18

Will be here at the museum until around 3-4pm today. Getting more machines tested and tagged and back to the warehouse. No one available to be docent so going to stay as long as I can. Feel free to stop by! (Gets lonely here sometimes ;-) Tony Sent from my iPhone

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Help Needed for Science Fair with Commodore 64, PET & VIC-20
by C.J. Slade 17 Mar '18

17 Mar '18

Hi VCF, Connor S has come the last 2 workshops at VCF with his Dad and loves working on vintage computers. He has been working on the 5th Grade Science Fair project for the past few months. Connor is comparing vintage to modern computers and has been researching and testing the Altair 8800 (clone), Apple II GS, Macintosh SE, iBook G3, Commodore 128 & Mac Book Air. He would like to add the C-64, PET & VIC-20, but doesn't have access to run tests. Would someone be willing to run the following 3 tests on the *Commodore 64*, *Commodore PET *and *Commodore VIC-20 *this week for Connor to include in his results? 1) Boot Time into OS Time in seconds from turning on the power switch to computer fully loaded in OS 2) Highest factorial calculated (BASIC; Hope I typed his program correctly) Connor's guess it that the PET & VIC-20 will only be able to calculate 33 factorial. 10 INPUT "NUMBER"; A 20 B = A 30 B = B - 1 40 PRINT A "*" B 50 A = A * B 60 PRINT A 70 IF B > 1 GOTO 30 80 END 3) Time (in minutes) to count to 10,000 in BASIC using this program. 10 I = 0 20 PRINT I 30 I = I + 1 40 IF I < 9999 GOTO 20 50 PRINT "DONE" You can e-mail results to Connor S (& me) at *basicprogrammer10(a)gmail.com <basicprogrammer10(a)gmail.com>*. Connor will be happy to acknowledge and thank who ever helps with this additional data on his science fair poster. He would be happy to share final results at an upcoming workshop, if there is interest. Thank you, Jen (Connor S's Mom) :)

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Museum report
by Evan Koblentz 16 Mar '18

16 Mar '18

Busy time for me -- warehouse today, Trenton tomorrow, museum docenting Sunday. Still new-ish volunteer Laura and I did warehouse work from about 2pm-7pm today. She put a second coat of paint on the new UNIVAC pallets. I consolidated the huge collection of slide rules into fewer boxes. Then we spent an hour or two playing shelving unit Tetris -- moving things around the warehouse for better efficiency. The result is some things are in more logical places now, and other things that were in the unsorted area were moved into the sorted area. So a net positive. We took another hour cleaning the pile of empty boxes. Threw away some boxes of odd sizes or in poor condition, nested others, and neatly re-stacked all the common banker boxes. We also sorted through a few boxes of miscellaneous stuff and generally straightened up some cluttered areas. It's been an impressive improvement in the warehouse this past year. Jeff B. and Adam deserve most of the credit for it. It is a pleasure now to go in there and see wide aisles with a good amount of open space. We'll need that space for the next huge project (probably post-VCF East) which is to sort, organize, and consolidate our vast collection of books, magazines, and manuals. Trenton will be fun tomorrow but what I'm really looking forward to is the historic and rare minicomputer being delivered here Sunday. What kind is it? Don't you all want to know. :) I will announce it and post pictures when it gets here.

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No posts in honor of Pi Day
by Jim Scheef 15 Mar '18

15 Mar '18

Are we not posting today to honor Pi Day? Jim

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